Cancer is the easiest thing. Everything else is harder. We begin as one cell, undifferentiated. Slight chemical gradients, subtle beyond description, influence growth and change. Tissue becomes muscle, bone, hair, optic nerve, epithelium. The strange attractor in the biotic soup exerts its pull. Despite strong physical perturbations to these infant systems (heating, cooling, crawling, at times being flung in the air and caught) the pattern in the gradients is undisturbed; and we develop, cell by cell, as if by plan. Until we stop. Each cell suddenly gets the message not to grow, and not to reproduce (except to replace a lost neighbor, and then only one identical neighbor, somehow only one cell getting that message). Signals adrift in the gradient, subtle this time almost beyond understanding. Cancer is simpler. A single wild cell. Soon, many wild cells-- feral, unfettered, reproducing as long as the nutrients hold out. Careless of neighbors, each one making more or less exact copies of itself willy nilly. This is the other strange attractor in the cells, the older, simpler way. This is what life was and what it is when it reverts (will ye, nil ye). Cells go feral every day and phagocytes engulf them. Other cells get less defined, losing bits of dna with every reproduction. This is the chaos we were born to swim in. And eventually to drown in, (will we, nil we). There is nothing strange about the tumors. They are ordinary, almost beyond remark. The miracle is everything else, the billion cells not reproducing in almost perfect concert. I can't tell you how to die or even ask you not to. I am here, brother cell in a larger body, to celebrate life with you, and to fight death with you. Together in a hopeless cause where every day's struggle is sweet victory. Cancer is the easiest thing. It's everything else that's hard. Copyright 1998 by Steven Gulie Back